Emphasis in the electrical equipment manufacturing industry on the development of increasingly compact and complex electrical devices has resulted in the development of circuit board edge connectors which feature multiple-row lead-out connections. Instead of mechanically plugging a circuit board into an edge connector, whereby contact lands on each side of the circuit board are contacted by corresponding connector elements, closely spaced leads of a connector are soldered to corresponding lands on the circuit board, and the connector becomes permanently mounted to the circuit board.
A particular type of circuit pack connector, which becomes mounted through such a soldering operation to the edge of a circuit board, features an array of a plurality of rows of connector sockets. The respective circuit board may then be plug-connected to a corresponding array of pins extending from a connector plane. For example, circuit boards which feature such a circuit pack connector may be plugged into pins extending from the plane of a relatively larger main circuit board. Such plug-in assemblies of a plurality of sub-circuits to a main circuit permit dense packing of electronic circuit elements and a quick replacement of defective circuit portions.
A problem in the assembly of the referred to circuit pack type of connector results from the relatively close spacing of connector leads which need to be aligned with and soldered to equally narrow and closely spaced solder terminals at the edge of the respective circuit board. Close spacing of the leads in comparison to typical connector contact spacings comes about because of the rearraying of contact leads from an array of four or six rows into two rows of leads which are then solder-mounted to respective terminals on opposite sides of the circuit board. The problem is one of aligning the plurality of leads to their precise spacing.
A prior art alignment technique involves viewing the connector under a microscope and, with the help of a fine adjustment tool, manually bending into alignment any of the leads which are out of position.